According to a report published by a Russian cybersecurity firm, $882 million has been stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges over the past two years.
The Group-IB company conducted research, according to the results of which, over the past two years, hackers managed to steal $882 million from exchangers. GIB is confident that these numbers will increase in 2019. The potential increase in thefts is due to the fact that more and more experienced hackers like Lazarus, MoneyTaker, Cobalt are focusing their attention on cryptocurrency exchanges and ICOs.
A company representative said:
In 2019, cryptocurrency exchanges will become a new target for more aggressive groups of hackers who usually attack banks. The number of targeted attacks on crypto exchanges will increase.
According to Group-IB, hackers used a variety of attack methods to hack exchanges. The most effective methods were phishing emails and installing malware.
2018 was a testing year for many exchangers. Not long ago, the American blockchain firm CipherTrace published a similar report, which states that the amount of funds stolen as a result of hacker attacks is almost $1 billion. The report also indicates that the number of cryptocurrency thefts increased manifold in 2018.
Asian exchanges seem to be suffer the most. Many experts believe that the reason for such a large number of hacks is that exchange operators continue to store customer funds in weakly protected hot storage wallets. This year several companies suffered due to a similar error - in January, approximately 523 million NEM was stolen from the Japanese exchanger Coincheck. Shortly after this, the South Korean exchange also suffered a cyber attack.
According to Ethereum World News
You May Also Like
Hacker played DOOM on John McAfee's “unhackable” wallet
John McAfee's "totally secure" cryptocurrency wallet, with a $250,000 reward for discovering its vulnerabilities, was hacked and used by a teenager as a gaming platform for playing DOOM.
Wall Street Journal: Hundreds of ICOs are scams
A recent study published in the Wall Street Journal on December 27 found that hundreds of cryptocurrency projects show signs of fraudulent activity and plagiarism.
